A Multi System Emulator, Possible for DC?

[Tr?]

Not sure if the source is or will ever be released, but I was rummaging around online and found what appears to be a good looking emulator, although I haven't tried it out at all, I am just going by what I have read about it.

Anyway, I was wondering if anything like this could ever be ported to the DC...

Xe Multi System Emulator

About:

About:

Xe is a multi system emulator for Windows and Linux that emulates many console and handheld video game systems of the past. Xe is an original emulator written from scratch by one person. It is not a port or collection of other emulators.

It currently supports the following systems:
SG-1000
Famicom & Famicom Disk System / NES
Mark III / Master System
PC Engine & PC Engine CD-ROM2 / Turbo Grafx 16 & Turbo Grafx CD
Mega Drive & Mega CD / Genesis & Sega CD
Super Famicom / SNES
Neo Geo
Neo Geo CD
CPS Changer
Game Boy & Game Boy Color
Game Gear
Neo Geo Pocket & Neo Geo Pocket Color
Wonder Swan & Wonder Swan Color

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Features:
Xe:
Easy to use graphical user interface
Gzip support for BIOS, ROM, floppy, and CD images and save ram
Zip support for ROMs and floppy images
Soft Zoom support
Hardware render video support
Full Screen mode
Dual-head / multi-head support
Screen resolution change
Rotate Screen support
Sound card and volume control
Joystick support
Configurable input
CD-ROM support
Region select support
Save screen shot support
Battery backed SRAM / EEPROM / Flash support
SG-1000:
Z80 CPU emulation
All TMS9918 VDP layers and priorities (1x BG, 1x Sprite)
Video modes 0, 1, and 2
Zoomed sprite
All SN76489 PSG channels (3x Square, 1x Noise)
Famicom:
M6502 CPU emulation
All PPU layers and priorities (1x BG, 1x Sprite)
Color enhance support
B/W video support
All APU channels (2x Square, 1x Triangle, 1x Noise, 1x DPCM)
FM Channel support
Mark III:
Z80 CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (1x BG, 1x Sprite)
All SN76489 PSG channels (3x Square, 1x Noise)
All YM2413 FM channels (6x FM, 3x FM / 5x Melody)
PC Engine:
H6280 CPU emulation
All VDC layers and priorities (1x BG, 1x Sprite)
All VDC2 (Super Grafx) layers and priorities (1x BG, 1x Sprite)
All VCE dot clock support
B/W video support
All PSG channels (6x Wavetable / 6x DAC)
ADPCM channel support
Audio CD Player support
CD controller support
CDDA channel support
Super Grafx support
Games Express CD support
CD-ROM2 support
Super CD-ROM2 support
Arcade Card support
Mega Drive:
2x M68000 CPU emulation
Z80 CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (2x BG, 1x Window, 1x Sprite)
Shadow / Highlight support
interlace support
All SN76489 PSG channels (3x Square, 1x Noise)
All YM2612 FM channels (5x FM, 1x FM / 1x DAC)
All RF5c164 PCM channels (8x PCM)
Audio CD Player support
CD controller support
CDDA channel support
Numerical Processor emulation
Mega CD support
Super Famicom:
G65816 CPU emulation
SPC700 CPU emulation
All PPU layers and priorities (4x BG, 1x Sprite)
All screen modes: 0-7
8x8, 16x8 and 16x16 tile support
Hi-Res Mode and Pseudo 512 mode support
interlace support
HDMA support
Transparency support
Mosaic support
Window clipping support
All APU channels (8x ADPCM)
Neo Geo:
M68000 CPU emulation
Z80 CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (1x FG, 1x Sprite)
Sprite scaling support
All YM2610 FM channels (3x Square, 1x Noise, 4x FM, 6x ADPCM-A, 1x ADPCM-B)
Neo Geo CD:
M68000 CPU emulation
Z80 CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (1x FG, 1x Sprite)
Sprite scaling support
All YM2610 FM channels (3x Square, 1x Noise, 4x FM, 6x ADPCM-A, 1x ADPCM-B)
CD controller support
Audio CD Player support
CDDA channel support
CPS Changer:
M68000 CPU emulation
Z80 CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (3x BG, 1x Sprite)
All YM2151 FM channels (1x Noise, 8x FM)
All MSM6295 ADPCM channels (4x ADPCM)
All Q-Sound channels (16x PCM)
Game Boy:
Z80gb CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (1x BG, 1x Window, 1x Sprite)
HDMA support
All PSG Channels (2x Square, 1x Wavetable, 1x Noise)
Mono and color support
Game Gear:
Z80 CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (1x BG, 1x Sprite)
All PSG channels (3x Square, 1x Noise)
Neo Geo Pocket:
TLCS-900/H CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (2x BG, 1x Sprite)
All PSG channels (3x Square, 1x Noise)
DAC channel support
Flash RAM support
Mono and color support
Wonder Swan:
V30MZ CPU emulation
All VDP layers and priorities (2x BG, 1x Sprite)
Window clipping support
All PSG channels (2x Wavetable, 1x Wavetable / 1x DAC, 1x Wavetable / 1x Noise)
Mono and color support

Homepage

Code: Select all

http://www.xe-emulator.com/

Also looking at the screenshots, it appears that the system can also emulate the PC-FX, Famicom Disc System and a bunch more...

[mankrip]

This is too heavy for the DC, and most of the systems emulated by it have other emulators for the DC.

[Juan]

xe is pretty damn good, but when it comes to porting something to DC, I was hoping someone would take a look at Raine

[Ex-Cyber]

xe is pretty damn good, but when it comes to porting something to DC, I was hoping someone would take a look at Raine

Raine makes extensive use of x86 assembly language.

[Juan]

xe is pretty damn good, but when it comes to porting something to DC, I was hoping someone would take a look at Raine

Raine makes extensive use of x86 assembly language.

Thanks for looking into that.

[Christuserloeser]

Well, most games are already emulated by MAME4ALL, but from what I see there could be a port using FAME + FAZE --- the x86 assembler stuff would obviously still have to be rewritten so I think waiting for a newer version of MAME for GP2X would probably be the better option

- To play the early Darius games on Dreamcast would rock !

[rondc]

I think so a MESS port can be done in Dreamcast. MAME4ALL uses same platform and MESS is already running on gp2x

http://www.mess.org

http://www.freshports.org/commit.php?ca ... reebsd.org



I think that like Mame, the port shouldn't be a problem, most of 8 and 16 computers could be emulated also a lot of consoles, now with the SDLMess release even can be better for porting.

Regards

[Christuserloeser]

Nice to see you posting here, Ron

- a new port of MESS based on the GP2X version surely is a good idea

[rondc]

As everybody knows MESS is the multi console and computer emulator based on the MAME source code. ...

Believe me when I tell you that the project MESS is something that I have been commenting during a long time at DCiberia , We were about to carry it out and even I have had talks with Chui about to port MESS. But Mess for DC from Chui's part is not a prioritary project. Mame works very well in the Dreamcast, why not to have a SDLMess version too . For me is a Dream

The only problem I can see with this release are the requirements, too high for a Dreamcast, and also SDL 1.2.10 and a functional OpenGL.

So, MESS is also ported to gp2x but from XMESS release. I know that can be a challenge but why not to try it !!!. I believe that there's a version ported to PSP too.

Possible systems to be emulated at first instance:

* Atari 7800
* Colecovision
* Coleco Adam Home Computer
* Texas Instruments 99/4A Home Computer
* Tandy Color Computer
* Apple ][, ][e, //c
* Odyssey 2
* Emerson Arcadia 2001

At the begining just few systems should work, but a Multi System-Console emulator for Dreamcast is always a very desired, If someone wishes to begin the project you can count with me.
This source code uses SDL, I understand that to decompress above XMess have to patch the code. Anyway I'll take a look:

All source code and binaries can be found at author´s website:

0.102 xmame-0.102.tar.bz2 25 November 2005
http://x.mame.net/download/historic/xmame-0.102.tar.bz2

The corresponding source archive (must be unpacked over the std xmess src). There is also a patch included which must be applied to the xmess base code before overlaying the gp2x sources.

http://users.adelphia.net/~bsturk/gp2x/ ... src.tar.gz

Best Regards

[Strapping Scherzo]

I'm wondering... what is the SNES component of Xe based on? Is it coded from scratch? Based on Snes9x? It would be interesting to see if that part could be stripped out and ported. Of course I highly doubt that the performance or compatibility would be anything near Snes9x BUT... maybe it would be simpler to optimize for DC. One thing no one one was able to do was use the PVR to do the tile/sprite rendering like that Genesis emu (the name eludes me). I spent many hours studying Snes9x's rendering code and couldn't see a straight forward way to do it. It was very complicated code (to me). I dunno. It's a thought.

EDIT: Hmmm, it doesn't appear to be open source. Forget it.

[Ex-Cyber]

The author of XE says that it's "an original emulator written from scratch by one person". It's not really verifiable since it's closed-source, but it's not totally absurd given that all the systems emulated are pretty well-documented, either by technical documents or by the code of other emulators. Most of the work in emulation is not the actual code-writing, but rather figuring out what the correct behavior is.

[Strapping Scherzo]

I've been thinking to write an emulator from scratch. I feel it's something I should do since I consider myself both a video gamer and a good programmer. Of course, NES is the primary candidate because there is so much information on it. But I also feel like I need to avenge my failure in improving SNES emualtion on the DC. I feel that if I could just write the emu with the idea all along that the graphics would be driven by 3D graphics card like the PVR instead of a frame buffer, then I'd have a higher chance for success.

[Ex-Cyber]

I feel that if I could just write the emu with the idea all along that the graphics would be driven by 3D graphics card like the PVR instead of a frame buffer, then I'd have a higher chance for success.

Old-school VDPs do basically everything line-by-line; I'm not sure using modern hardware for the actual rendering would work well (I guess it might help for palette/colorspace conversion, scaling etc. though).

[Strapping Scherzo]

I feel that if I could just write the emu with the idea all along that the graphics would be driven by 3D graphics card like the PVR instead of a frame buffer, then I'd have a higher chance for success.

Old-school VDPs do basically everything line-by-line; I'm not sure using modern hardware for the actual rendering would work well (I guess it might help for palette/colorspace conversion, scaling etc. though).

Yeah, I've thought about that. I know I would be trading accuracy/compatibility for speed. Tricks that SNES programmers used that were based around manipulating values mid-screen draw would be hard if not impossible to emulate. But it would be a good challenge.

NesterDC SE sort of drained me and I haven't wanted to do a personal project for quite some time now. But I have the coding itch again, so I'm considering several things.

[Ex-Cyber]

I thought about it some more, and I think it might be possible to do a tile-based rendering system with the ability to incorporate raster effects, but it seems like it would be complicated.